11 October 2013

No Hurry: Poems 2000-2012 by Michael Blumenthal

Michael
Blumenthal’s eighth poetry collection invites long-devoted readers as well as
those unfamiliar with his work into the intimacy of his deepest concerns. If
you’re unfamiliar with Blumenthal’s body of work think of him as a less urban, more
European Philip Levine—less miserable, yet as droll as Philip Larkin.

Besides
Blumenthal’s accomplishments as a poet, he is a Visiting Professor of Law at
The West Virginia University College of Law, a psychotherapist for expatriates
in Budapest, and a memoirist, essayist, and novelist. His novel Weinstock Among The Dying won Hadassah
Magazine's Harold U. Ribelow Prize for the best work of Jewish fiction.

No Hurry: Poem 2000-2012, arranged in four
sections, is intensely observant of locations as divergent as Berlin and Texas.
Blumenthal also focuses his poems on the stark reality of aging with its inherent
strains of regret and resignation. Though these poems are sophisticated, they
are delightfully accessible and relevant. The collection acts a mirror to our
buffoonery and brilliance--paradoxical creatures that we are.

The first
section opens with a visit to “Atelier Rheingold,” a sardonic analysis of the
double-life where “. . . for a price, some sweet young girl/will seek to
satisfy, sending you home/to your ordinary life once more. . .”

This
unwavering look at fantasy-fulfillment for a fee speaks about culture at large
and asks the question—as anything beyond price?Blumenthal writes from middle-age and knows what it is to be on the
other side of our actions and their consequences.

“Gratitude”
lets readers know that though Blumenthal acknowledges, even celebrates existence
with nostalgia and an underlayment of melancholy, he is not sentimental. The puerile
humor in lines such as:

It’s hard to imagine this banana,

having come all the way from Honduras

shaped like a crooked penis

in its yellow winter coat

is here in my hand now

where I am peeling back its foreskin

like a woman (well, you know

what I’m about to say . . .)

tell us
that, yes, we should laud our “many blessings,” but remember to play. I won’t
give away the final line. Blumenthal’s last lines are superb. They redirect the
unfolding of meaning into an unexpected direction that invites rereading the
poem to re-experience that turning.

The poems
in section two include wide-ranging topics: Hugh Hefner, moles, politics, German
nationalism, self-deprecating humor, existential meditations, and an elegy for
Lucy Grealy, the poet who committed suicide in 2002. Her face was deformed by
jaw cancer.In a poem with the same
title as Grealy’s memoir, Blumenthal addresses “Autobiography of a Face,” to
Grealy.Blumenthal expresses compassion for
Lucy when he imagines her reaction to herself: “. . . why/the less than
beautiful are forced to hide. . .” and in the line, “You saw your face in
mirrors and you cried” echoes throughout a poem as a touchstone for grief.

As a
counterpoint to sorrow, poems like “Desire,” capture moments of earthy
pleasure:

Let’s just say I seem to be enjoying these three
chicken drumsticks

far more than the young man doing sit-ups just
across the lawn

Blumenthal
witnesses a range of moods in No Hurry
which gives the collection credibility.

“The
Wounded”, the introductory poem of section three, will connect with many
readers as it speaks to the instinct to pity ourselves and others.Blumenthal advises that:

It is good to pity them

but not too much, or for too long,

lest we make a habit of it

and encourage them to pity.

and in the
fifth stanza Blumenthal knows that:

they will never be entirely healed,

that, in place of their wounds

there will be scars, phantom pains,

recurrent nightmares, phobias, fears . . .

and
concludes with:

I myself have been among them.

Pity me. Then stop.

Section
three includes poems that contemplate the varieties of love—young, parental, wavering—as
well as aspects of kindness, a complex expression than might be considered meek.Blumenthal reminds us that compassion is a
choice after invoking Henry James’ “four rules of life—/be kind be kind be kind be kind . . .” in the final poem of the
section aptly titled, “Be Kind.”Blumenthal
reminds us that “it may be/that kindness is our best audition/for a worthier
world . . .” This poem is not as much a call to action as it is a call to give
our miserable soulsa chance to connect
before it’s too late.

The final
section of No Hurry mourns the
inevitable ruin of the physical body, including the demise of the sex life.
Blumenthal illustrates how to come to terms with mortality.In “Downhill” the rhythm of the poem is the
sensation of decent—there’s no fighting gravity or the grave:

You know when the woman leaves

in the middle of the night

and the dog stays

you’ve reached the point

on the descending slope of the journey

where there’s no going back—

As a
contrast to the aging poems, Blumenthal observes the next generation still
encased in the belief that they’ll live forever in “For My Son, Reading Harry Potter”. He celebrates the young
reader and the father’s wish “that life may let you turn and turn/these pages,
in whose spell/time is frozen, as is pain and fright and loss . . .”

The
collection concludes with a dash of tongue-in-cheek humor in the first of the final
two poems, “Six Cheerful Couplets on Death”. The rhyming couplets have a
Dorothy Parker feel to them—a mournful, yet playful
view of death. And in the final poem, Blumenthal offers a measure of peace in
the lines: “. . . My inner voice/says nothing about ambition, nothing/about
love . . .” At the end we must slow down, lay down our battles, our earthly
drives and enjoy the moment as a “. . . scent of honeysuckle/wafts between the
trees . . .”

Take some
time with Blumenthal’s collection—it’s like the luck of happening upon an
impromptu conversation in which mid-age insight is freely shared with those
that can relate. Or it is given, not as a warning but as a sentinel for the
next generation.

Kim Loomis-Bennett is an MFA candidate in the
Wilkes University creative writing program.